People: Frank Michelman

Klemen Jaklič LL.M. ’00 S.J.D. ’11 has been elected judge of the Constitutional Court of Slovenia by the Slovenian parliament after being nominated by the president of Slovenia earlier this spring. His nine-year term officially started on March 27.

On March 6, John Manning ’85, Harvard Law School deputy dean and Bruce Bromley Professor of Law, delivered a talk, “Without the Pretense of Legislative Intent,” as part of the Scalia lecture series at HLS.

With the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia ’60 of the U.S. Supreme Court on February 13 has come an outpouring of remembrances and testaments to his transformative presence during his 30 years on the Court. On February 24, Dean Martha Minow and a panel of seven Harvard Law School professors, each of whom had a personal or professional connection to the justice, gathered to remember his life and work.

Since at least 1983, when Harvard Law student Evan Wolfson ’83 wrote a third-year paper exploring a human rights argument for same-sex marriage, Harvard Law School has participated in anticipating, shaping, critiquing, analyzing and guiding the long path toward marriage equality.

In October 1962, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Harvard Law School on “The Future of Integration.” It was six months before he would be imprisoned in a Birmingham jail, 10 months before the March on Washington, almost two years before the signing of the Civil Rights Act and almost six years before his assassination. “It may be that the law cannot make a man love me,” he said, “but it can keep him from lynching me.”

In the mid-1990s, Dennis Davis, then a judge of the High Court of Cape Town, sought out HLS Professor Frank Michelman ’60 to advise South African officials on constitutional interpretation. “From that moment on, he became a resource person for us. We regard him as one of ours,” said Davis. “It’s a very, very deep relationship.”

An array of luminaries from academia and the bench—and from around the world—came to Harvard Law School to celebrate Professor Frank Michelman ’60 and his influential work, as he prepares to retire after nearly half a century on the HLS faculty.

In their book,“No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador” (Harvard University Press, 2009), Clinical Professor James Cavallaro and Spring Miller ’07 analyze the evolution of violent street gangs and the Salvadoran state’s responses to gang-related and other forms of violence. The findings are based on primary research conducted in El […]

The American Constitution Society of HLS sponsored “The Constitution in 2020,” a panel discussion in November featuring Harvard Law School Professors Yochai Benkler ’94, Frank Michelman ’60, Mark Tushnet, and Noah Feldman, all contributors to a recently published book of the same title. The book’s goal is to contest the conservative idea that constitutional law should not be influenced by contemporary understandings of law and the political landscape.